This is a follow up to the thread from a few days ago, and specifically my comment in that thread regarding the use of a "Escalation" label.

As many users identified in that topic, political discussion on Tildes has the potential to become very heated, very quickly, and often the standards of discussion on these topics is below what we expect elsewhere on Tildes. In that thread, many suggestions were offered in order to remedy the situation, including banning overt political content entirely, more liberal moderation by @Deimos, more liberal usage by the community of labels, addition of new labels, and more. All of these solutions have their advantages and disadvantages, but I want to talk about the one I believe would be the most effective and least disruptive to the site as is: addition of new labels.

Right now, there are two main tags that might be used on a comment that is seen as falling short of Tildes's standards: noise and malice. Users seem to have some variation in how they interpret how each tag should be used, but it seems like there is at least some agreement on the 'noise' tag being used for comments that are clearly low effort. Users seem to have more hesitation to use the 'Malice' tag, however. While it is sometimes clear when a comment is hostile or malicious, this is not always the case. Argumentative is not always hostile, and sometimes topics are naturally contentious. One takeaway from that thread (for me) is that labeling something as malice confers a judgement on intent, and users are not always comfortable doing this as it can be difficult to tell if someone truly meant to be malicious. But in political threads, the intent matters less than the effect a comment has in a discussion. Someone can not be acting maliciously, but still be clearly making the situation worse. This is the point of an 'Escalation' label.

An "Escalation" label should be applied to comments that have made the situation worse.

Furthermore, an "Escalation" label would not only affect the sorting of a comment or thread, but has the potential to halt the discussion if there is too much escalation in a short amount of time. Here is what I envision:

Define the heat of a comment (as in, "ohhh this conversation is getting heated") as follows:

H = k*n ∑ N_i / d_i

where k is a tuning constant, n is the number of escalation tags given to the comment in question, and the sum ranges over the comment's direct ancestors and descendants in the thread with N_i being the number of "Escalation" labels given to the other comment and d_i is the distance from the current comment to that other comment. Here is an example thread:

.
├── A
├── C0
│   └── C1 (N=1)
│      └── C2 (N=0)
│          └── C3 (N=2)
│               └── C4 (N=1)
└── B0
    └── B1

The heat of comment C3 would then be

H = k*2 (1/2 + 1) = 3k

Finally, define the heat H(T) of a thread T to be the sum of the heats of its comments. My proposal is that if the heat of a given thread surpasses some threshold value H_c, replies are locked in that thread only. This essentially shuts down extremely heated conversations before they get out of control and cause an entire topic to be locked.

The above definition can obviously be modified, but it has a few good properties that I think should be retained.

1. It takes into account the relative positions of comments. A thread that is 20 comments long that has a comment with 1 "Escalation" at the beginning, midpoint, and end is probably a better and more controlled situation than a thread with 3 "Escalation" labels in a row.
2. One extremely heated comment (n is large) that generates many okay or slightly heated replies (n~1) is oftentimes just as bad as many comments that each escalate a bit (a long chain of comments, each with n~1).
3. It considers a the whole thread as opposed to on a comment by comment basis. If there is only one person in a thread posting heated comments, even if the replies are measured and reasonable, there is a good chance that thread is not producing a worthwhile discussion. If that one problem user stays problematic too long, eventually the heat of the thread will surpass the threshold and the chain will be locked.

I am sure there are disadvantages that I am not thinking of right now, but I truly think a system like this could be beneficial if implemented and used by Tildes. Furthermore, if two people are genuinely interested in the discussion and want it to continue, it is in their interest to avoid posting comments that get generate a high heat score so that the thread doesn't become locked. If they are not interested and keep escalating anyway, that conversation probably shouldn't continue.

I am interested in your thoughts on this idea. However, I don't intend for this topic to become a repeat of many of the suggestions and comments in the thread linked at the beginning - I don't mean to reignite that discussion.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

this week's curry was a simple chicken korma recipe I made that I found on tesco foods' website, last place I'd expect to get a recipe for a curry hah. I'm quite happy with this experience because it's the first time in a while I've had significant leftovers after eating one of these, which means I totally ate less than I usually do. In fact, we had leftovers for over 2 more breakfasts left ! It makes me happy because I'm trying to lose a bit of weight out here... means I'm doing the good first step :P Anyhow, as it comes for the recipe, it was a quite simple recipe with not a lot of complexity to the spice mix. I do believe the added 'extra spices' it tells you to add at the bottom are real crucial for it to be extra delicious comparatively to what it would've been with just the main spices. One thing I did have to change tho was the usage of Chicken drumsticks instead of breasts as the recipe calls for, which ended up being alright as well. Honestly chicken dishes can pretty easily interchange the cut of chicken without it affecting the quality of the dish much, which is pretty great ! Another touch I found quite appealing was the use of toasted flaked almonds as a garnish, the crunchiness of the almonds made for a real nice textural contrast. Overall a simple dish and pretty by the books I think, but that doesn't mean it's any bad ! Def recommend if you're in the mood for something simple.

Picture of the dish: https://imgur.com/a/L7Ix8T9
Recipe: https://realfood.tesco.com/recipes/chicken-korma-curry.html

Question of the day: Any recent culinary discoveries you'd think people should know more about?

Have a great day and STAY SAFE ! <3
Tomi, your friendly neighbourhood marshmallow~

What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

What things -- big or small, successful or not-- have you put your money towards in hopes of bringing them to light? Tell us the story of why you chose to support them and whether or not you feel your contribution was worth it to you in the end.

My brother and I have been going at it on if a YouTube channel puts out a video, based around a conversation with either a static image or a simple eye catch behind it, can it be considered a podcast? I'm of the opinion that a podcast is a podcast because it's an audio file, in an aggregator, that can be downloaded to a portable device with minimal fuss. He's of the opinion that the content makes a podcast, and if all podcast aggregators suddenly go under, any audio files with album art uploaded to YouTube would be considered indistinguishable from podcasts, so podcasts can live exclusively in the YouTube space and still be considered a podcast.

Does anyone else have a take on this? Can I use Tildes to definitively prove my brother wrong?

I was looking for an old movie review from a movie news website that (sadly) no longer exists and it took me down an Wayback Machine rabbit hole that got me thinking about all of the websites I used to be extremely active on that aren't reachable any more.

So I'm just curious if others have any fond memories of sites that they used to be a part of that no longer exist?

Tl;dr human birth rates are falling universally and globally and at some point in this century will mean a decrease of the world's population. The effects of this will/has been felt in stuff like pensions/retirement and so far, noone has proposed any solutions other than increased immigration and denying women abortions. So what should we do to solve this? Should we even find solutions given that stuff like pollution and climate change is man-made?

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

This is a scenario question similar to the "You are stranded on a deserted island, what do you bring?" question. The following guidelines I offer stem from my planning and experiences, I begin my 4 months shortly.

• There is no electricity, no running water, no plumbing, no cell phone service nor internet service.
• US Postal Service is available.
• It is about 45 minutes away from the nearest town and is located on United States Forest Service owned land.
• You will be sharing the cabin with several other like-minded people that you've never met before in a roommate dynamic.
• The accommodations are free through the program.
• This program runs a 9 days on, 5 days off work schedule. For the 9 days on, you will be camping along trails you are maintaining and not be at the cabin.
• Basic food storage (coolers), a solar shower, washboards and tables will be provided.

What do you bring? For functionality? To maintain comfort and/or sanity? Entertainment purposes? Keep in mind the point of this experience is to remove yourself from the grid, expose yourself to the rawness of nature and the elements. While it's tempting to say you'd bring a $10k solar/battery array, download all the things, and just host 5 day binge watching sessions with the bears, that's not the purpose. ;)